8 WINE. 
The wines of the moderns, there is no doubt, are much more 
perfect than those of the ancients, as far as can be discovered 
by anything that has reached the present time. Brillat Sava- 
rin, in his ‘‘ Physiologie du Goit,’’ places taste among the 
sciences ; which, not like Minerva, that sprang all-armed from 
the brain of Jupiter, but as a daughter of Time, is formed 
gradually; so that modern taste, as regards wine, is an ameli- 
oration on the taste of the ancients. Taste for good wine, like 
music and painting, is not attained without cultivation and long 
experience, for the flavour and aroma of the finest products of 
the Garonne and the Rhine would be wasted on the palates of 
northern peasants. As to what the poets said in regard to 
wine, goes for nothing as to flavour. Shakspeare may extol 
Sherry for the most exquisite; Redi, Montepulciane ; Prior, 
Claret ; Boileau, Burgundy ; Crabbe, Port; and Moore, spark- 
ling Champagne; but this would decide nothing a thousand 
years hence about the nature or flavour of the wine, and each 
kind cannot be the best. The properties of the ancient wines, 
celebrated by the poets, is a sealed book to us for ever; and 
every rational person must admit that to judge modern by the 
ancient wines is an absurdity. 
Some interesting facts are connected with the geographical 
distribution of the vine. It is not an inhabitant of torrid cli- 
mates; its juice possesses exhilarating rather than cooling 
qualities. The demand for wine does not arise from any 
natural want, and in hot climates indeed it cannot be enjoyed 
with the same freedom as in those parts where it is indigenous. 
Montesquieu said that the law of Mahomet prohibiting winé 
was a law of the climate of Arabia. 
The cultivation of the vine succeeds only in those climates 
where the annual mean temperature is between 50 and 63 de- 
grees, or the mean temperature may be as low as 48 degrees, 
